Be Excellent To Each Other

I have kept you on specifically because Halo 4 is imminent.

The thing about doing this is not so much if you dont play with those people but if you play games with high score tables e.g.

Trials HD
Pacman CEDX
Geometry Wars II
The Pinball Arcade
Pinball FX 2

you'll end up with a really small list of players who may not play those games , or you just have the 'world' lists which tend to have the top spots filled with those who want to hack the game rather than people of a similar skill level.

Theres more to having a lot of XBLA friends on the list than just playing multiplayer games with those people who happen to be online at the same time you are.

Anybody fancy a NervousPete's Top 15 Most Atmospheric PC Games of all Time?

I'd do a top ten, but I just can't. It's impossible.

yes, please!

Hell yes.

Happy Birthday MarkG!

Yes !

Happy birthday Markg!

Happy birthday, mate!

A friend gave me his mom and dads laptop last night. It doesn’t work but he wants me to see if I can salvage the pictures off the hard drive.

Shouldn’t be too much of a problem as the drive sounds like it’s spinning up alright so I’m going to put that in my caddy to use on my PC. Fingers crossed for that then.

He did say that if I can fix the laptop, then I can have it. Sounds exciting don’t you think? Well yes as it’s a decent spec, but I have a feeling that the motherboard might be knackered. I’ve tried turning it on with the RAM swapped about but I still get nothing. Not even any beeps or BIOS.

I’m going to have a mess with it tonight but I’m not hopeful of being able to fix it without spending some money on it and if it comes to that, I’ll probably just eBay it for spares.

Could be a screen thing - I've not had a PC that beeps for ages. Does the caps-lock light work? Have you tried plugging it into a monitor?

Erm... Not sure about the caps lock light, I haven't tried that.

I did think about the screen but if I plug it into another monitor, that still might not work? Wouldn't I have to enable that in the control panel?

Happy birthday Mark

All my stuff in my laptop smells of lavender.

I think one of those sleep night sprays that you get in hotels leaked.

Lap dancers smell of lavender as well.

I do have the hips to lap dance..

Caps Lock is controlled by the hardware rather than the software, so it's quite a good indicator of how badly things have broken. I think.


It might not - it depends on how far back the "no screen" problem goes (if you see what I mean).


I don't think so, no. You might have to enable it in BIOS, but I doubt it.

Most laptops also have a hotkey to enable external monitors (function F5 or F8) and that would at least let you see if its outputting a video signal

Some good info there Grim... and Zaphod. I'll be giving this a go tonight and I've no doubt I'll post here to let you know how I get on (and to get more advice!)

Isn't that software controlled, though? I know all the 'magic' keys stopped working on an old laptop of mine when I put Ubuntu on it.

Some may have spotted my whinging in the car thread about needing something cheap in a hurry.

Last weekend, one of my best friends, a guy I've known since I was 11, came over for a beer. He's genuinely the loveliest guy I've ever met, but crushingly awful with the ladies and has thus been single the whole time I've known him. He genuinely is 6 years short of being a 40-year old virgin - a fact that bothers me immensely, since he deserves to be happy.

He's been worrying me a fair bit lately, because I know him well enough to know that he's actually very unhappy in his life at the moment.

Anyway, as we were walking to the local supermarket to get some booze, he told me that he's basically not had a whole lot to spend his wages on over the last few years and has consequently saved up a fair few bob. I was telling him about some of the cars I'd been looking at and he told me that he had enough now in the bank to just walk into a dealership and buy some of the nicer cars I've been looking at brand new, outright in cash. He told me that he knew my finances were in a shit shape, and he told me he didn't think I should be taking a risk buying a shit old cheap car and offered to lend me a few grand interest free in order to get something better. I said "no", on account of having no idea when I'd ever be able to pay him back. He told me this wasn't a concern and that he didn't care how long it took me to pay him back - he just wanted to make sure I had a decent car to get to work in. He told me he'd feel insulted if I turned down his offer.

There is no way on this Earth that I intend taking him up on his offer, generous though it is. I can't think of a more obvious way of fucking up a 23 year old friendship.

I'm vaguely interested though in what other people on here might do in a similar situation though?

I'd snap his hand off, personally. Interest free, and provided you intend to pay it back as soon as you can I'm sure he'd be fine with it.

Why do you think it would fuck up the friendship?

I've got to be honest mate, I think I would accept, if I thought the offer was 100% genuine. (I've helped two of my close mates out to the tune of £thousands myself, when I knew they were in really deep shit not of their making)

You've known the guy 23 years so you're perfectly placed to know if he means it. I think as long as you're honest and say you don't even know when you'll be able to pay him back, it's okay.

I'm sure the guy loves you and does not want to see you struggling with yet more grief in the form of a shit, possibly unsafe shit-tip of a car, on top of everything else.


(However - and I do NOT mean this in any bad way - you should repay the favour and get this poor guy *laid* already! Pay for it if you have to. Poor sod)

I'm not sure I could handle owing someone that much cash, strings-free or not.

Just, DON'T get him pregnant.

LULZ

Our Microwave's knacked. I was just thinking aloud about contacting a repair place to see the cost of such things when my Ma said "The Megatron's probably gone in it." I know he's evil but taking a robot wazz in my microwave's a step too far.

I have two laptops in front of me that you can do that switch at boot so at that point there is nothing to run the software on (ones a Tosh and ones a Lenovo) - so its still worth trying

I'll have a go tonight. I got home with it quite late last night and only had chance to mess with the RAM but tonight, hopefully I'll have a few minutes free to dick about with it.

I'm with Cras a little on this, I feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being so in debt with a friend. He totally isn't the sort of guy that would come round to do my kneecaps in and I'm sure the offer is genuine, but still...

Trust me, I'm trying to get him laid! Myself and my girlfriend keep trying to get him to let us set up an online dating profile for him and all sorts. I've tried setting him up on dates with female friends, none of it seems to work. Guy just hasn't got a clue.

Swap him a red shirt for a car.

I agree with Craster I think. I wouldn’t feel comfortable owing that much money to a friend, no matter how nice they were about it.

Seriously, it is a kind offer, but I'd feel uncomdortable about taking the cash. There is a proverb about lending money to friends. However, he could buy the car and you rent it from him...

I probably wouldn't take the money if I was in the same situation as you, Zio - if my house needed heating or my missus needed bailing out of jail or something I'd take his monies, though.

Would you lend it to him if the situations were reversed?

Also, I think this confirms something most of us know - bitches be spendy.

On my facebook, there's a picture of Grandfather Mummy selling flowers on Oxford street sometime in 30s. He looks well dodgy, like he went through a cemetary on his commute.

You can pick up a cheap and cheerful new on from your local supermarket for about £30.

In ikea it is Aisle E Shelf d place 209. It's the one 40 foot taller than the others and smells of hydraulic fluids.

Meh. I owe one of my best friends several grand.

I got rid of high interest credit card debt, he got slightly higher interest than the bank would pay him. Win win.

In a spate of anti-logic - the kind I'm famous for - if the roles were reversed, I think I totally would lend him the cash. That still doesn't mean I feel I should borrow from him though. It's one thing being the guy handing the cash out, it's another being the guy that's taking it, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

And yeah, bitches be spendy. They be very spendy.

Forgetting the whole moral issue, he would be forcing an x-thousand pound loan on you when you've said you can't even really afford 2 thousand.

So interest free or not, will you be able to pay back that cash?

Word.

Why not get him to buy the car?
It's his car, you're going to use it. When the time comes and you sell it, pay him the difference.

A girl once described me as her walking cash dispenser. Imagine my amusement when on the next date I took her to the harvester in Kidlington as it was two meals for a fiver before 6pm. On the bus.

We don't even have one. All I ever used it for was warming up milk to make coffee. I don't have a boiler or bins any more either.

Probably not for quite some time. I've recently made certain steps that mean that if I play my cards right, I should be out of debt, or at least have the vast majority of my debts repaid, in around 3 years. When that happens, things should be very different for me financially speaking, but until that time, I'm pretty much broke.

The guy knows all this though. He's probably the only real life person, other than my girlfriend, that knows the full extent of my financial woes.

LOL.

You should've put an [OUT OF SERVICE] Post-It note on your forehead.